Full title/subtitle: "So what have the Romans ever done for us? Ireland's links with the Roman empire are being investigated in a new archaeological project in which science plays a large part".
Posted on 06/20/2012 6:42:38 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Roman artifacts including coins, glass beads and brooches turn up in many Irish counties, especially in the east.
Cahill Wilson investigated human remains... using strontium and isotope analysis and carbon dating.
Remarkably, this allowed her say where they most likely spent their childhood. One burial site on a low ridge overlooking the sea in Bettystown, Co Meath, was dated to the 5th/6th century AD using radiocarbon dating. Most of the people were newcomers to the area, Cahill Wilson concluded.
The clue was in their teeth. Enamel, one of the toughest substances in our body, completely mineralises around the age of 12 and its composition remains unaltered to the grave and beyond. It is "a snapshot of where you lived up to the age of 12", Wilson explains.
The element strontium (Sr), which is in everything we eat and drink, exists in a number of chemical forms, or isotopes. The ratio of two of these isotopes (87Sr and 86Sr) varies, shifting with the underlying geology, and this too can indicate where the owner of the tooth grew up.
Similarly, the ratio of oxygen isotopes varies with factors such as latitude, topography and hydrological conditions.
"Enough comparative data is available now that we can start to plot and map the ratios to see where people are likely to be from," Cahill Wilson explains. Paired analysis of strontium and oxygen in tooth enamel from a burial in Bettystown revealed that one interred individual grew up in North Africa...
Roman material has been found at Tara and Newgrange, and Roman pottery has been dredged from the River Boyne. A large coastal promontory fort in north Dublin also turned up Roman objects, and Kilkenny hosts a Roman burial site.
(Excerpt) Read more at irishtimes.com ...
Well, there is running water and the road system...but nothing else. ;-)
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Yes, the Romans did invade Ireland -- And we don't need Roman forts as evidenceTacitus tells us that Agricola, while pondering the invasion of Ireland, had with him an Irish chieftain for use in just such an exercise. At about the same time, Juvenal specifically tells us, Roman 'arms had been taken beyond the shores of Ireland'. The myth of Tuathal connects him to a number of Irish places, some of which have been excavated and have produced Roman material of the late 1st or early 2nd centuries AD. Indeed, the sparse inland distribution of early Roman material matches Tuathal's 'mythical' campaign remarkably well.
by Richard Warner
British Archaeology
May 1996
We may interpret Tuathal as an exiled warrior/adventurer seizing and keeping power with the aid of Roman arms, who was followed by a number of other exiles with similar support over the next couple of centuries. We can say this because the sites that produce early Roman objects also produce later Roman material. In particular Tara, the midland ritual complex, and Clogher, a northern hillfort, have produced early and late Roman material, but no native objects. Both became capitals of the new ascendancies whose ancient origin-tales derived them, with their armies, from Britain. Cashel, the southern capital of just such a group, has not only produced a stray late Roman brooch, but was named from the Latin castellum.
It is not acceptable to dismiss this concatenation of evidence simply on the grounds that neither a Roman stone fortress nor straight road have been found. Nor may we easily dismiss the extraordinary fact that the material and, to a great extent, social culture of the upper class Irish from the 6th century on owes far more to Roman than to native Irish precursors. To give just two examples among many: the favoured Irish cloak-fastener from the 4th-11th century, the penannular brooch, evolved from a Romano-British brooch; and the early medieval Irish sword was, both in form and in name, a borrowing from that of the Roman army.
You mean, Apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?
;’)
Roman Ireland
by Vittorio Di Martino
For the Celts they succeeded in conquering (not the Irish/Scots or the Picts) with hundreds of thousands slaughtered and literally millions enslaved, the price of that progress was very high. Were they alive today one could ask Vercingetorix and Boudica what they thought of Roman civilization.
All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Nothing!
Roman Meal Bread.
What the heck is roman meal bread?
OBTW, good luck with my teeth - I can’t remember how many countries I lived in before I was 12.
My wife says I have Roman hands.... :)
Gladius is on the wrong [left]side, unless he’s supposed to be a Centurion, and the helmet [leather?] says ‘NO’. No Lorica segmenta or chain mail. the spear’s wrong. Couldn’t they at least have used one of those British re-enactors. their gear is spot on.
Concrete. Capece?
Thanks for this thread.
:’)
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